In Plato’s Protagoras, Socrates argues that ‘the many’ are confused about the experience they describe as ‘being overcome by pleasure’. They think the cause is ‘something other than ignorance’. He argues it follows from what they believe that the cause is ‘ignorance’ and ‘false belief’. I show that his argument depends on a premise he does not introduce but they should deny: that when someone is overcome by pleasure, the desire stems from a belief. To explain why Plato does not (...) make Socrates introduce this premise, the account I construct is speculative. It starts from the assumption that Plato is thinking through an understanding of human beings and what they must do to live good lives that he takes the historical Socrates to set out. (shrink)

In Plato’s Gorgias, Socrates says to Callicles that “your love of the people, existing in your soul, stands against me, but if we closely examine these same matters often and in a better way, you will be persuaded” (513c7–d1). I argue for an interpretation that explains how Socrates understands Callicles’s love of the people to stand against him and why he believes examination often and in a better way will persuade Callicles.

In the Phaedo, to explain why the philosopher lives in the unusually ascetic way he does, Socrates explains what someone realizes when philosophy takes possession of his soul and how he changes his behavior on the basis of this information. This paper considers the conception of belief the character uses in this explanation and whether it is the same as the conception Michael Frede thinks the historical Socrates is likely to have held and that the Stoics much later incorporated into (...) their doctrine of practice. (shrink)

A brief dissertation on what knowledge is.

A short dissertation on a definition for knowledge. Although similar to binary opposition, this treatise follows the logic to conclude that knowledge is finite.

Contemporary developments in economicmethodology have produced a vibrant agenda ofcompeting positions. These include, amongothers, constructivism, critical realism andrhetoric, with each contributing to the Realistvs. Pragmatism debate in the philosophies of thesocial sciences. A major development in theneo-pragmatist contribution to economicmethodology has been Quine's pragmatic assaulton the dogmas of empiricism, which are nowclearly acknowledged within contemporaryeconomic methodology. This assault isencapsulated in the celebrated Duhem-Quinethesis, which according to a number ofcontemporary leading philosophers of economics,poses a particularly serious methodologicalproblem for economics. This problem, (...) asreflected in Hausman's analysis, consists ofthe inability of economics to learn fromexperience, thereby subverting the capacity totest economic theories. In this paper wedispute this position. Our argument is basedon a combination of Quine's holism with VanFraassen's constructive empiricism, especiallythe latter's analysis of empirical adequacy andhis pragmatic approach to explanation. Theresulting reorientation of economic methodologyrestores the capacity of economics to learnfrom experience and reinstates the imperativeof developing alternatives to orthodoxtheorizing in economics. (shrink)

A number of debates in philosophy of biology and psychology, as well as in their respective sciences, hinge on particular views about the relationship between genotypes and phenotypes. One such view is that the genotype-phenotype relationship is relatively straightforward, in the sense that a genome contains the ?genes for? the various traits that an organism exhibits. This leads to the assumption that if a particular set of traits is posited to be present in an organism, there must be a corresponding (...) number of genes in that organism's genome to account for those traits. This assumption underlies what can be called the ?counting argument,? in which empirical estimates of the number of genes in a genome are used to support or refute particular hypotheses in philosophical debates about biology and psychology. In this paper, we assess the counting argument as it is used in discussions of the alleged massive modularity of the brain, and conclude that this argument cannot be upheld in light of recent philosophical work on gene concepts and empirical work on genome complexity. In doing so, we illustrate that there are those on both sides of the debate about massive modularity who rely on an incorrect view of gene concepts and the nature of the genotype-phenotype relationship. (shrink)

This volume provides a broad overview of issues in the philosophy of behavioral biology, covering four main themes: genetic, developmental, evolutionary, and neurobiological explanations of behavior. It is both interdisciplinary and empirically informed in its approach, addressing philosophical issues that arise from recent scientific findings in biological research on human and non-human animal behavior. Accordingly, it includes papers by professional philosophers and philosophers of science, as well as practicing scientists. Much of the work in this volume builds on presentations given (...) at the international conference, “Biological Explanations of Behavior: Philosophical Perspectives”, held in 2008 at the Leibniz Universität Hannover in Germany. The volume is intended to be of interest to a broad range of audiences, which includes philosophers (e.g., philosophers of mind, philosophers of biology, and metaethicists), as well as practicing scientists, such as biologists or psychologists whose interests relate to biological explanations of behavior. (shrink)

The United States Fish and Wildlife Service in Alaska, USA, conducted a species status assessment for a petition to list the Alexander Archipelago wolf (Canis lupus ligoni) under the Endangered Species Act in 2020-2022. This federal undertaking could not be adequately prepared without including the knowledge of Indigenous People who have a deep cultural connection with the subspecies. Our objective is to communicate the authoritative expertise and voice of the Indigenous People who partnered on the project by demonstrating how their (...) knowledge contributed to the species status assessment. The Indigenous knowledge applied in the assessment is the cultural and intellectual property of those who have shared it. We employed rapid appraisal research to expeditiously develop a preliminary and qualitative understanding of Indigenous People's cultural and ecological knowledge of Alexander Archipelago wolves. We used semi-directed interviewing and inductive coding from grounded theory for text analysis. Indigenous knowledge contributed to the agency's understanding of the Alexander Archipelago wolf in Southeast Alaska and helped the agency with their classification decision. Indigenous research partners explained the rich cultural significance and position of wolves in Tlingit society and described human–wolf relationships and ecological interactions. The agency used a single-species assessment approach based in species ecology and conservation biology, whereas the Indigenous wolf experts applied a multi-species, community ecology approach based in a sociocultural context of balance and respect. The Indigenous wolf experts successfully addressed knowledge gaps identified by the agency. The partners were challenged by a short regulatory timeframe that did not allow for comprehensive study of Indigenous knowledge and constrained review and feedback by Indigenous experts. The United States Fish and Wildlife Service learned that its assessment framework was not designed to account for an Indigenous worldview. To level the playing field, the agency and Indigenous experts should discuss how to co-develop an assessment framework that equitably applies both perspectives. (shrink)

The role of evolutionary theory at the origin of life is an extensively debated topic. The origin and early development of life is usually separated into a prebiotic phase and a protocellular phase, ultimately leading to the Last Universal Common Ancestor. Most likely, the Last Universal Common Ancestor was subject to Darwinian evolution, but the question remains to what extent Darwinian evolution applies to the prebiotic and protocellular phases. In this review, we reflect on the current status of evolutionary theory (...) in origins of life research by bringing together philosophy of science, evolutionary biology, and empirical research in the origins field. We explore the various ways in which evolutionary theory has been extended beyond biology; we look at how these extensions apply to the prebiotic development of (proto)metabolism; and we investigate how the terminology from evolutionary theory is currently being employed in state-of-the-art origins of life research. In doing so, we identify some of the current obstacles to an evolutionary account of the origins of life, as well as open up new avenues of research. (shrink)

Ever since its inception, the theory of evolution has been reified into an “-ism”: Darwinism. While biologists today tend to shy away from the term in their research, the term is still actively used in the broader academic and societal contexts. What exactly is Darwinism, and how precisely are its various uses and abuses related to the scientific theory of evolution? Some call for limiting the meaning of the term “Darwinism” to its scientific context; others call for its abolition; yet (...) others claim the term refers to a myth-like story. In this paper we propose a conceptually grounded overview of the term. We show how the scientific dimension of Darwinism feeds into, and is influenced by, guises of Darwinism as a methodology and as an ethically and politically charged “worldview”. The full meaning of Darwinism, as well as how this meaning has changed over time, can only be understood through the complex interaction between these three dimensions. (shrink)

A key source of support for the view that challenging people’s beliefs about free will may undermine moral behavior is two classic studies by Vohs and Schooler (2008). These authors reported that exposure to certain prompts suggesting that free will is an illusion increased cheating behavior. In the present paper, we report several attempts to replicate this influential and widely cited work. Over a series of five studies (sample sizes of N = 162, N = 283, N = 268, N (...) = 804, N = 982) (four preregistered) we tested the relationship between (1) anti-free-will prompts and free will beliefs and (2) free will beliefs and immoral behavior. Our primary task was to closely replicate the findings from Vohs and Schooler (2008) using the same or highly similar manipulations and measurements as the ones used in their original studies. Our efforts were largely unsuccessful. We suggest that manipulating free will beliefs in a robust way is more difficult than has been implied by prior work, and that the proposed link with immoral behavior may not be as consistent as previous work suggests. (shrink)

When some P implies some Q, this should have some impact on what attitudes we take to P and Q. In other words: logical consequence has a normative import. I use this idea, recently explored by a number of scholars, as a stepping stone to a bolder view: that relations of logical consequence can be identified with norms on our propositional attitudes, or at least that our talk of logical consequence can be explained in terms of such norms. I investigate (...) the prospects of such a cognitive norm account of logical consequence. I go over the challenges involved in finding a plausible bridge principle connecting logical consequence to cognitive norms, in particular a biconditional principle that gives us not only necessary but sufficient conditions for logical consequence in terms of norms on propositional attitudes. Then, on the assumption that an adequate norm can be found, I consider what the philosophical merits of such a cognitive norm account would be, and what theoretical commitments it would generate. (shrink)

In the Freedom Essay, Schelling provides four different accounts of the copula, two of which are largely implicit. In this paper, I focus on the first of these accounts, which I call the "mediated account." I argue that this explanation of the copula articulates a fundamental ontological structure in Schelling's philosophy. In the first half of the paper, I analyze the structural features of the account, drawing on Schelling's more extensive treatment in the Ages of the World. In the second (...) half of the paper, I argue that Schelling's fundamental distinction between that-which-exists and the ground of existence exhibits the same structure as the mediated account of the copula. This has implications for understanding the enigmatic relationship of these two principles to the Ungrund. I conclude by briefly suggesting other applications of this fundamental structure in Schelling's philosophy. (shrink)

What determines whether an object is an artwork? In this paper I consider what I will call ‘social’ theories of art, according to which the arthood of objects depends in some way on the art-related social practices that we have. Though such a dependence claim is plausible in principle, social theories of art tend to unpack the determining link between artworks and social practices in terms of intentional relations between the objects in question and the people involved in the relevant (...) practices. This intentionalism has unappealing upshots. Drawing on two-dimensional approaches in social ontology, I show how social theories of art can be done differently, improving their prospects. (shrink)

After introducing the concept of compressed sensing as a complementary measurement mode to the classical Shannon-Nyquist approach, I discuss some of the drivers, potential challenges and obstacles to its implementation. I end with a speculative attempt to embed compressed sensing as an enabling methodology within the emergence of data-driven discovery. As a consequence I predict the growth of non-nomological sciences where heuristic correlations will find applications but often bypass conventional pure basic and use-inspired basic research stages due to the lack (...) of verifiable hypotheses. (shrink)

REMARKS ON EVOLUTION AND TIME-SCALES, Graham Cairns-Smith; HODGSON'S BLACK BOX, Thomas Clark; DO HODGSON'S PROPOSITIONS UNIQUELY CHARACTERIZE FREE WILL?, Ravi Gomatam; WHAT SHOULD WE RETAIN FROM A PLAIN PERSON'S CONCEPT OF FREE WILL?, Gilberto Gomes; ISOLATING DISPARATE CHALLENGES TO HODGSON'S ACCOUNT OF FREE WILL, Liberty Jaswal; FREE AGENCY AND LAWS OF NATURE, Robert Kane; SCIENCE VERSUS REALIZATION OF VALUE, NOT DETERMINISM VERSUS CHOICE, Nicholas Maxwell; COMMENTS ON HODGSON, J.J.C. Smart; THE VIEW FROM WITHIN, Sean Spence; COMMENTARY ON HODGSON, Henry (...) Stapp. (shrink)

In this essay, I give an analysis of the account of non-being in the Weltalter, focusing on the ways in which this account reflects Schelling’s new ontology of revelation. I begin by discussing the connection between non-being and the fundamental distinction between the principles in God. I then turn to the relationship of non-being to being in the Weltalter and show how a new meaning of being allows Schelling to distinguish non-being from nothing. The new meaning of being also makes (...) possible a distinction between essential non-being and de facto non-being; this distinction allows for the temporal sequence of revelation and the possibility of evil. I conclude by showing the implications of Schelling’s theory of non-being for his understanding of creation. (shrink)

ExtractIn a democracy people are free to express their opinions and question those of others. This is an important personal freedom, and also essential to the very idea of government by discussion. But it has also been held to be instrumentally important because in open public debate true ideas will conquer false ones by their merit, and the people will see the truth for themselves. In other words, democracy has an epistemic function as a kind of truth machine. From this (...) it follows that in a democracy there should be no dogma: no knowledge protected from public challenge and debate. Yet this whole argument is founded on embarrassing misconceptions of the nature of truth and of the working of democracy.Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.DEMOCRACY IS NOT A TRUTH MACHINEVolume 12, Issue 33Thomas WellsDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1477175612000309Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. DEMOCRACY IS NOT A TRUTH MACHINEVolume 12, Issue 33Thomas WellsDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1477175612000309Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. DEMOCRACY IS NOT A TRUTH MACHINEVolume 12, Issue 33Thomas WellsDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1477175612000309Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation. (shrink)

A growing number of decision theorists have, in recent years, defended the view that rationality is permissive under risk: Different rational agents may be more or less risk-averse or risk-inclined. This can result in them making different choices under risk even if they value outcomes in exactly the same way. One pressing question that arises once we grant such permissiveness is what attitude to risk we should implement when choosing on behalf of other people. Are we permitted to implement any (...) of the rationally permissible risk attitudes, is there some specific risk attitude that is required when choosing for others, or are we required to defer to the risk attitudes of the people on whose behalf we are choosing? This article elaborates on this question, explains its wider practical and theoretical significance, provides an overview of existing answers, and explores how to go about providing a more systematic account of how to choose on behalf of others in risky contexts. (shrink)

The exploration of chemical periodicity over the past 250 years led to the development of the Periodic System of Elements and demonstrates the value of vague ideas that ignored early scientific anomalies and instead allowed for extended periods of normal science where new methodologies and concepts are developed. The basic chemical element provides this exploration with direction and explanation and has shown to be a central and historically adaptable concept for a theory of matter far from the reductionist frontier. This (...) is explored in the histories of Prout’s hypothesis, Döbereiner Triads, element inversions necessary when ordering chemical elements by atomic weights, and van den Broeck’s ad-hoc proposal to switch to nuclear charges instead. The development of more accurate methods to determine atomic weights, Rayleigh and Ramsey’s gas separation and analytical techniques, Moseley’s X-ray spectroscopy to identify chemical elements, and more recent accelerator-based cold fusion methods to create new elements at the end of the Periodic Table point to the importance of methodological development complementing conceptual advances. I propose to frame the crossover from physics to chemistry not as a loss of accuracy and precision but as an increased application of vague concepts such as similarity which permit classification. This approach provides epistemic flexibility to adapt to scientific anomalies and the continued growth of chemical compound space and rejects the Procrustean philosophy of reductionist physics. Furthermore, it establishes chemistry with its explanatory and operational autonomy epitomized by the periodic system of elements as a gateway to other experimental sciences. (shrink)

In Winter 2017, the first author piloted a course in formal logic in which we aimed to (a) improve student engagement and mastery of the content, and (b) reduce maths anxiety and its negative effects on student outcomes, by adopting student oriented teaching including peer instruction and classroom flipping techniques. The course implemented a partially flipped approach, and incorporated group-work and peer learning elements, while retaining some of the traditional lecture format. By doing this, a wide variety of student learning (...) preferences could be provided for. (shrink)

Review article on Alexander Schnell’s book “Hinaus: Entwürfe zu einer phänomenologischen Metaphysik und Anthropologie” (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2011). According to Schnell, an exclusively descriptive phenomenology is not enough; phenomenology must also be constructive. He thus outlines an ambitious project for constructive phenomenology that promises (1) to provide an ultimate justification for knowledge and (2) to ground a phenomenological metaphysics and anthropology, each of which is centered on the “image” (Bild). Insofar as Schnell fills in the details of this outline, (...) his analysis is careful, provocative, and filled with insight. (shrink)

At first glance, Schopenhauer’s account of human freedom looks strikingly similar to Schelling’s account of formal freedom in the Freiheitsschrift. Despite the clear similarities, I argue that there is a decisive difference between the two accounts—a difference that has to do with the ultimate grounding of freedom. For Schelling, the intelligible deed is a radical self-grounding of the eternal essence of the human being. For Schopenhauer, the eternal essence of the human being is groundless. Moreover, I argue that this difference (...) has decisive consequences for two sets of issues. On the one hand, Schelling’s concept of self-grounding allows him to preserve the universal application of the principle of ground. On the other hand, self-grounding is the only way that human beings can be responsible for who they are. Schelling thus anticipates a key insight of Galen Strawson: ultimate moral responsibility is only possible for a causa sui. (shrink)

This paper examines the differences between moralist, realist, and pragmatist approaches to political legitimacy by articulating their largely implicit views of judgment. Three claims are advanced. First, the salient opposition among approaches to legitimacy is not between “moralism” and “realism.” Recent realist proposals for rethinking legitimacy share with moralist views a distinctive form, called “normativism”: a quest for knowledge of principles that solve the question of legitimacy. This assumes that judging legitimacy is a matter of applying such principles to a (...) case at hand. Second, neither Rawls nor Habermas is a normativist about political legitimacy. The principles of legitimacy they proffer claim to express rather than adjudicate the legitimacy of a liberal-democratic regime, and thus cannot solve the question of legitimacy at a fundamental level. But perhaps we should question the normativist aspiration to theoretically resolving the problem to begin with. My third claim is that a “pragmatist” approach enables us to rethink political legitimacy more deeply by shifting focus from the articulation of principles to the activity of judging. Implicit in Rawls’s and Habermas’s theories I then find clues towards an alternative account of judgment, in which the question of legitimacy calls not for theoretical resolution but for ongoing practical engagement. (shrink)

This book is a new interpretation of Schelling's path-breaking 1809 treatise on freedom, the last major work published during his lifetime. The treatise is at the heart of the current Schelling renaissance—indeed, Heidegger calls it "one of the most profound works of German, thus of Western, philosophy." It is also one of the most demanding and complex texts in German Idealism. By tracing the problem of ground through Schelling's treatise, this book provides a unified reading of the text, while unlocking (...) the meaning of its most challenging passages through clear, detailed analysis. This analysis shows how Schelling's implicit distinction between senses of ground is the key to his project of constructing a system that can satisfy reason while accommodating objects that seem to defy rational explanation—including evil, the origins of nature, and absolute freedom. This allows Schelling to unite reason and mystery, providing a rich model for philosophizing about freedom and evil today. (shrink)

Husserl’s early picture of explanation in the sciences has never been completely provided. This lack represents an oversight, which we here redress. In contrast to currently accepted interpretations, we demonstrate that Husserl does not adhere to the much maligned deductive-nomological (DN) model of scientific explanation. Instead, via a close reading of early Husserlian texts, we reveal that he presents a unificationist account of scientific explanation. By doing so, we disclose that Husserl’s philosophy of scientific explanation is no mere anachronism. It (...) is, instead, tenable and relevant. We discuss how Husserl and other contemporary thinkers draw theoretical inspiration from the same source—namely, Bernard Bolzano. Husserl’s theory of scientific explanation shares a common language and discusses the same themes as, for example, Phillip Kitcher and Kit Fine. To advance our novel reading, we discuss Husserl’s investigations of grounding, inter-lawful explanation, intra-mathematical explanation, and scientific unification. (shrink)

Standard decision theory, or rational choice theory, is often interpreted to be a theory of instrumental rationality. This dissertation argues, however, that the core requirements of orthodox decision theory cannot be defended as general requirements of instrumental rationality. Instead, I argue that these requirements can only be instrumentally justified to agents who have a desire to have choice dispositions that are stable over time and across different choice contexts. Past attempts at making instrumentalist arguments for the core requirements of decision (...) theory fail due to a pervasive assumption in decision theory, namely the assumption that the agent’s preferences over the objects of choice – be it outcomes or uncertain prospects – form the standard of instrumental rationality against which the agent’s actions are evaluated. I argue that we should instead take more basic desires to be the standard of instrumental rationality. But unless agents have a desire to have stable choice dispositions, according to this standard, instrumental rationality turns out to be more permissive than orthodox decision theory. (shrink)

Is it possible for an individual that has gone out of being to come back into being again? The English Aristotelian, Thomas White, argued that it is not. Thomas Hobbes disagreed, and used the case of the Ship of Theseus to argue that individuals that have gone out of being may come back into being again. This paper provides the first systematic account of their arguments. It is doubtful that Hobbes has a consistent case against White. Still his (...) criticism may have prompted White to clarify his views on identity over time in his later work. (shrink)

We have a variety of different ways of dividing up, classifying, mapping, sorting and listing the objects in reality. The theory of granular partitions presented here seeks to provide a general and unified basis for understanding such phenomena in formal terms that is more realistic than existing alternatives. Our theory has two orthogonal parts: the first is a theory of classification; it provides an account of partitions as cells and subcells; the second is a theory of reference or intentionality; it (...) provides an account of how cells and subcells relate to objects in reality. We define a notion of well-formedness for partitions, and we give an account of what it means for a partition to project onto objects in reality. We continue by classifying partitions along three axes: (a) in terms of the degree of correspondence between partition cells and objects in reality; (b) in terms of the degree to which a partition represents the mereological structure of the domain it is projected onto; and (c) in terms of the degree of completeness with which a partition represents this domain. (shrink)

The reader of RTP is granted just a few paragraphs before habit is introduced: Habit! That able but slow-moving arranger who begins by letting our minds sufer for weeks on end in temporary quarters, but whom our mind is nonetheless only too happy to fnd, for without it, reduced to its own devices, it would be powerless to make any room habitable. (SW, 9, translation altered; I 8) Implied is a view of mind: powerless to interfere with habit’s course, but (...) equally powerless to reconcile us even to something as innocuous as a room, were it not for habit’s work. Corresponding to this is a view of the world: hostile. The objects are nasty, imposing, menacing: a ‘mentally poisoning’ smell, malicious curtains and a cruel mirror (SW, 9; I 8). Habit, unbidden but welcome, steps in. The mirror becomes compassionate. Habit is a central aspect of the narrator’s worldview. It appears both at major plot points and in signifcant theoretical passages. Proust had already thematised habit in some of his earliest published work – notably in ‘Violante ou la Mondanité’ (1892) (‘Violante, or High Society’) – as well as in unpublished material (see II 1352 fn. 2). His ideas have their roots in his philosophical education, where habit formed a key part of the syllabus. Indeed, in retrospect, we can say that Proust may have been taught philosophy at a time and place where habit, as a philosophical topic, was approaching its high watermark, as a major theme in French philosophical thought. Another major theme, of course, was time. (shrink)

In this paper, I set out some basic elements of a deontic logic with an implementation appropriate for handling conflicting legal obligations for purposes of programming autonomous machine agents. Kantian justice demands that the prescriptive system of enforceable public laws be consistent, yet statutes or case holdings may often describe legal obligations that contradict; moreover, even fundamental constitutional rights may come into conflict. I argue that a deontic logic of the law should not try to work around such conflicts but, (...) instead, identify and expose them so that the rights and duties that generate inconsistencies in public law can be explicitly qualified and the conflicts resolved. I then argue that a credulous, non-monotonic deontic logic can describe inconsistent legal obligations while meeting Kant’s demand for consistency in the prescriptive system of public law. Finally, I propose an implementation of this logic via a modified form of “answer set programming,” which I demonstrate with some simple examples. (shrink)

Using a model of cognition as extended and enactive, we examine the role of materiality in making minds as exemplified by lithics and writing, forms associated with conceptual thought and meta-awareness of conceptual domains. We address ways in which brain functions may change in response to interactions with material forms, the attributes of material forms that may cause such change, and the spans of time required for neurofunctional reorganization. We also offer three hypotheses for investigating co-influence and change in cognition (...) and material culture. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 785793. (shrink)

Focusing upon the five books of his early Hermes series, this article argues that Michel Serres furnishes an accomplished, unconventional philosophical account of communication and mediation-a structuralist epistemology designed to comprehend the sciences in their complexity and plurality-that, even decades after its first publication, has significant value for media theory. Two key themes within this pentalogy are highlighted: firstly, its emphasis upon motifs of communication, transport, and circulation, attempting to grasp the scientific field in topological terms, as a kind of (...) networked encyclopaedia; and secondly, its attempt to account for the intricate relationship between the formal and the empirical in all theorization. (shrink)

The main thesis of this paper is that Pap’s The Functional A Priori of Physical Theory (Pap 1946, henceforth FAP) and Cassirer’s Determinism and Indeterminism in Modern Physics (Cassirer 1937, henceforth DI) may be conceived as two kindred accounts of a late Neo-Kantian philosophy of science. They elucidate and clarify each other mutually by elaborating conceptual possibilities and pointing out affinities of neo-Kantian ideas with other currents of 20th century’s philosophy of science, namely, pragmatism, conventionalism, and logical empiricism. Taking into (...) account these facts, it seems not too far fetched to conjecture that under more favorable circumstances Pap could have served as a mediator between the “analytic” and “continental” tradition thereby overcoming the dogmatic dualism of these two philosophical currents that has characterized philosophy in the second half the 20th century. (shrink)

I consider a new, non-disjunctive strategy for ‘relational’ or ‘naïve realist’ theories to respond to arguments from ‘perfect’ (causally matching) hallucinations. The strategy, in a nutshell, is to treat such hypothetical cases as instances of perception rather than hallucination. After clarifying the form and dialectic of such arguments, I consider three objections to the strategy. I provide answers to the first two objections but concede that the third — based on the possibility of ‘chaotic’ (uncaused) perfect hallucinations — cannot obviously (...) be dealt with by the proposed strategy. However, such ‘chaotic’ scenarios are also problematic for standard representational accounts of experience. Thus I conclude that perfect hallucinations pose no more of a threat to the relational theory than to its main representational rival. (shrink)

A part of the scientific literature consists of intermediate results within a longer project. Scientists often publish a first result in the course of their work, while aware that they should soon achieve a more advanced result from this preliminary result. Should they follow the proverb “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”, and publish any intermediate result they get? This is the normative question addressed in this paper. My aim is to clarify, to refine, and (...) to assess informal arguments about the choice whether to publish intermediate results. To this end, I adopt a rational decision framework, supposing some utility or preferences, and I propose a formal model. The best publishing strategy turns out to depend on the research situation. In some simple circumstances, even selfish and short-minded scientists should publish their intermediate results, and should thus behave like their altruistic peers, i. e. like society would like them to behave. In other research situations, with inhomogeneous reward or difficulty profiles, the best strategy is opposite. These results suggest qualified philosophical morals. (shrink)

The central challenge of “machine ethics” is to build autonomous machine agents that act morally rightly. But how can we build autonomous machine agents that act morally rightly, given reasonable disputes over what is right and wrong in particular cases? In this chapter, I argue that Immanuel Kant’s political philosophy can provide an important part of the answer.

Where artificial agents are not liable to be ascribed true moral agency and responsibility in their own right, we can understand them as acting as proxies for human agents, as making decisions on their behalf. What I call the ‘Moral Proxy Problem’ arises because it is often not clear for whom a specific artificial agent is acting as a moral proxy. In particular, we need to decide whether artificial agents should be acting as proxies for low-level agents — e.g. individual (...) users of the artificial agents — or whether they should be moral proxies for high-level agents — e.g. designers, distributors or regulators, that is, those who can potentially control the choice behaviour of many artificial agents at once. Who we think an artificial agent is a moral proxy for determines from which agential perspective the choice problems artificial agents will be faced with should be framed: should we frame them like the individual choice scenarios previously faced by individual human agents? Or should we, rather, consider the expected aggregate effects of the many choices made by all the artificial agents of a particular type all at once? This paper looks at how artificial agents should be designed to make risky choices, and argues that the question of risky choice by artificial agents shows the moral proxy problem to be both practically relevant and difficult. (shrink)

Some theories of goodness are descriptively rich: they have much to say about what makes things good. Neo-Aristotelian accounts, for instance, detail the various features that make a human being, a dog, a bee good relative to facts about those forms of life. Famously, such theories of relative goodness tend to be comparatively poor: they have little or nothing to say about what makes one kind of being better than another kind. Other theories of goodness—those that take there to be (...) absolute goodness—are comparatively rich: they offer grounds for judging some types of things better than others because they have more absolute goodness. Moorean accounts, for example, can tell us that humans and human experiences are superior to bees and blades of grass. But such theories tend to be descriptively poor: they struggle to tell us in virtue of what this is so. In this essay we motivate and flesh out a view that splits the difference between accounts of goodness as relative and accounts of goodness as absolute. Such a view holds promise only if the mechanics of this kind of metaphysics of goodness can be worked out. Here we present a view on which the paradigm for absolute goodness is God and the paradigm for each kind of relative goodness is a divine idea. (shrink)

Taurek cases focus a choice between two views of permissible action, Can Save One and Must Save Many . It is argued that Taurek cases do illustrate the rationale for Can Save One , but existing views do not highlight the fact that this is because they are examples of claims grounded on non-comparative justice. To act to save the many solely because they form a group is to discriminate against the one for an irrelevant reason. That is a canonical (...) form of non-comparative injustice. The error lies in taking a contingency of some presentations of some Taurek cases, namely, that they involve distribution, to introduce the claims of comparative as opposed to non-comparative justice. But cases of non-comparative justice can, contingently, also involve distribution. In order to settle which form of justice applies it is necessary to examine the nature of the distribution involved and the nature of “classes” to which individuals can be assigned. (shrink)

This paper accomplishes two goals. First, the essay elucidates Husserl’s descriptions of meaning consciousness from the 1901 Logical Investigations. I examine Husserl’s observations about the three ways we can experience meaning and I discuss his conclusions about the structure of meaning intentions. Second, the paper explores how Husserl reworked that 1901 theory in his 1913/14 Revisions to the Sixth Investigation. I explore how Husserl transformed his descriptions of the three intentions involved in meaningful experience. By doing so, Husserl not only (...) recognized intersubjective communication as the condition of possibility of linguistic meaning acts, but also transformed his account of the structure of both signitive and intuitive acts. In the conclusion, I cash out this analysis, by showing how, on the basis of these new insights, Husserl reconstructs his theory of fulfillment. (shrink)

We seek to develop a plausible conception of genetic parenthood, taking a recent discussion by Heidi Mertes as our point of departure. Mertes considers two conceptions of genetic parenthood—one invoking genetic resemblance, and the other genetic inheritance—and presents counter-examples to both conceptions. We revise Mertes’ second conception so as to avoid these and related counter-examples.